Once I decided that a book would be an outcome, I did need to modify my approach. Shooting for assignment means capturing 12 individual images that speak to the core theme. The book could have a similar conceptual basis, but would need a much broader and deeper analysis. For assignment a single shot of, say, a drunken group might be enough, for the book I would need several groups that built out the theme of drunkenness. In principal I could have spent a single long day and captured an acceptable set of 12 assignment images, i.e. a photo journalistic approach. A book requires more depth and the variety of scene/opportunity that a multi-day approach would bring.
Subsequently, I made 12 individual shoots at the Wiesn, spending roughly 18 hours with camera in hand and another 12 traveling back and forth. I ended the process with 1,600 photographs and a sore head, in more ways than one. The theme for the book would be the same as the assignment, a study of the people at the fest and how they behave with respect to one another, good and bad. The narrative would essentially follow the experience of visiting the Oktoberfest, from the fun of the fair, through the drinking and ultimately, if foolish, the nadir of drunkenness and illness. I do want to present the Fest as a positive experience and a celebration of Bavarian kitschy culture, but one that comes with a price.
Preparing for a book brings a great number of questions that must be asked:
- Format
- Publication
- Text and typography
- Page Design
- Narrative
- Photo Selection
All of these things influence one another,. The structure of the book can influence the narrative, a square format has a very different feel to a 3 x 2, informal versus arty. Conversely, choosing an 8 x 10 page design with full bleed will make any panoramic images useless. My choice of aspect ratio was actually quite constrained by my publication choice, Blurb. Blurb is an excellent on demand published, the quality of what they produce is superb, but they have a very limited choice of format, basically 7x7, 12x12, 8x10/10x8, or 11x13/13x11 (inches). None of these conform to my cameras 3x2 aspect ratio, a deep frustration and one that I keep hoping they will fix.
For this book I am going with 10x8 landscape, a standard mid-sized format and reasonably affordable. However, another decision to go full bleed for this book, means that all of my 3x2 images will have to be cropped to 5x4 format removing about 18% of the image area. Why full bleed? I want the book to be loud, colourful, fun, one image per page, but no white space around the photos. White space suggests an arty formal feel to the presentation, which I do not want for this work. In "Think of England", Martin Parr used this technique of full bleed pages to achieve the same effect, he even had more than one image per page, not ready for that yet!
This choice had a direct affect on image choice, several photos that I expect to submit are not usable in 5x4 rather than 3x2, life is a compromise. Another decision driven by the page design was the absence of text in the book, no intro, no chapter titles, just the book cover in Gill Sans MT. This is an experiment in creating a visual narrative, I want the photographs to stand up and speak for themselves, the Oktoberfest is well enough known or can be quickly Wiki'd, there is nothing I can add. I have created chapters, thematically linked sets of images, the first image in each set having an opposing empty page to signify the break. This them means that each chapter must have an odd number of images.
Each design decision affects all others! Without getting some of this stuff sorted up front the next step of selecting and sequencing the photographs is pointless.
To actually produce the book, my first task was to reduce the 1,600 images to an acceptable number, 160. At this stage I had no limit on the number of photos in the book, but did not want a vast number. I simply took the "keeper" sets I had created in Lightroom and grouped them into a single collection. These were printed 16 to an A4 page and then cut into individual playing card sized photos:
The next step was to start grouping the images into themes or chapters. I already had in mind a number of titles that I wanted to use. Initially I was going to label the chapters with the names, but as I progressed with the sort the photos often worked together but carried slightly different meanings. What was happening was that I was compiling a visual narrative, but one that did not quite work with the linearity of words, images can twist and turn in a book in ways that counter the use of words.
Broadly speaking these are the chapters:
- Parade - traditional first day opening of the fest
- People - so many people
- Morning - the day begins, people start queuing outside the tents at dawn
- Waiting - for friends to arrive
- Together - it is so good to be with your friends
- Rain - miserable rain
- Outside - enjoying food or drink at the stalls
- Fun - of the fair
- Beer - festival
- Tent - inside and drinking
- Drunk - OK, too much, but heck it was fun
- Paralytic - well in some cases too much
- Care - it's OK I'll look after you
First task was to put the photos into these groups and then develop the grouping:
I identified holes in the narrative at this stage and went back to the computer to pull some more images from the original 1,600, adding another 40 or so. These went into the mix and after about 6 hours this is the book chapter by chapter
My maquette was complete. This was a very useful process, the first time I have developed a book away from the computer. It was far easier to do this visually , physically moving photos from one pile to another and being able to see them side by side. I could also see how the colour developed through the set, with the darker, warm hued photos in the center surrounded by colder images. To finish I then went back to the computer and assembled the 107 chosen images into the set order for the book.
There was still editing work to do to re-balance colour and brightness reflecting how the pairs of photos would be seen together on the page. I also needed to rework any crops to allow for the ultimate crop that would happen when the photos dropped into the Blurb image containers on the pages. All was exported to highest quality JPG and then imported into a Blurb template that I had prepared. Chapters were created by inserting single white pages. The only extra piece of work was to create the cover in photoshop, I wanted larger text than Blurb supported.
Once in Blurb I adjusted the crop of the photos from 3x2 to 5x4, a process that worked pretty well, but did result in one or two image changes, nothing too serious. After a nights sleep I came back to the book, but all was well and the 350MB file was sent on its way to Blurb for printing:
Preparing this book is a key element of developing the assignment, it has helped greatly in developing narrative and concept. Not so much, though, in terms of choosing the final 12 images, there is a great different in carrying a story with 12 versus 107 photographs. I also see producing photobooks as central to my personal take on photography. The book as a narrative vehicle is where I expect to be in a years time as I embark on my level 3 studies.
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